After a great first day, I went back for the second day of BlogHer ’08 expecting another action and info packed day. Sadly, it was the inverse of the first day, where I expected nothing and was blown away. Now I was expecting the moon and was disappointed. Maybe it was me. Maybe my attitude was wrong. Or I was tired. Or not in the mood. Or signed up for the wrong break-out sessions. But I just wasn’t in the spirit of the thing.
I skipped the opening keynote which didn’t sound very interesting and went searching for the free coffee and pastries. They’d packed it all up before I got there, so I wandered around in a caffeine-deprived fog waiting for my first breakout session. Wish I’d skipped that, too.
I’m willing to believe part of the problem was lack of caffeine, but I’ve never sat through a more boring, pointless hour and a half. It confronted me with all the things I was initially afraid I’d find at BlogHer.
I had thought I’d sign up for a little star gazing and go to a session with some of the rock stars of blogging (at least they are in terms of their fame and the monetization of their blogs.) So it was a session led by Maggie Mason of Mighty Girl and Mighty Goods fame, along with Sarah Brown of Que Sera Sera and Evany Thomas of evany.com. As an added bonus, Dooce even showed up with her husband and sat in the back of the room. In the interest of full disclosure, none of these bloggers are people I follow, except to drop in every now and then and wonder what they did, besides start this back in the Nineties, to get the fame, ad revenue and book deals they all seem to have scored. They all do have their funny moments, but they seem to have that same snarky, “Ladette” sort of voice and preoccupation with oversharing their sex lives, gazing at their navels and telling us way too much about their breasts, bodily functions and bouts of constipation and/or diarrhea. Don’t know about you, but it gets kind of tiresome to me. But, as I said, they’ve been doing this forever, they have the kind of followings Elvis would envy, so I figured I could learn a thing or two from them.
Nada! Nothing. Firstly, Maggie Mason, who seems to have a very organized mind, judging by the great categorization of stuff on her various Mighty on-line shopping sites, could not corral these gals into any sort of coherent discussion. Almost from the first introductions there were extraneous references to “boobs” and blowjobs. Then it was just giggles with each other and ramblings about how much of a bummer it was that people actually READ their sites and think they know them. (Well, I only drop in occasionally and I think I know more about the intimate details of their lives than I do about my best friends. Like intimate details that I don’t really want to know.)
Again, I could just be out of step because the audience was all Fangrrrly and laughed at absolutely everything they said, including transitions like “Well, what do you think Evany?” I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was back in high school, watching the kids who wanted desperately to be “in” hanging on every word the cheerleaders and popular girls burbled in the school lobby, just on the off chance that the magic secret was revealed or they were suddenly welcomed into the A group.
get good close-ups with my Nikon D80. Seems I can never get down below F3.5. Doh!
The camera may be able to go lower, but the lens can’t. It’s printed right on it: 3.5-5.6G.
Note to self: must buy Macro Lens. BTW: Blogger Amy Lenzo did an excellent recap. Read it here.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, Maggie ran around the room with the mike and opened it up to questions. Now I had to listen to the ramblings and rants of people with no more traffic on their sites than I have. So I knew I wasn’t going to get any Top Tips from this confessional.
Even Dooce and her husband looked way bored as they fidgeted and fooled around with a Blackberry or an iPhone or some sort of device. Which got me thinking off on a tangent about how generally rude the few males in attendance seemed to be at nearly every session I went to. First off, it seemed to be mostly men handling the sound system duties, so perhaps I was seeing an unrepresentative sampling. Maybe these were the AV nerds all grown up. But at nearly every session they blabbed at top volume amongst themselves back among their soundboards. Don’t want to get paranoid about it, but if this had been a conference of mostly male techies would they have been so disrespectful?
After this sour experience, I went to lunch and contemplated ditching the rest of the day. Glad I didn’t. I found myself at a Photography Workshop lead by photographer Me Ra Koh. That alone was worth the full price of admission to BlogHer. In a fast paced, straight-forward hour or so, she demystified seven key things about photography with a DSLR. She has a series of video training courses and I’d seriously suggest that anyone needing a boost for their photography investigate them.
Yay! No more boring pictures of people in break-out sessions. It’s back to puppies and
flowers. Here’s Oscar in Lake Charles attempting to break Michael Phelps record.
At that point, I figured I’d better cut out. I wasn’t going to hear anything better that day. And I didn’t think I could stomach what was surely going to turn into a Dooce Lovefest at the Closing Keynote. (Although I had sort of wanted to hear Stephanie Klein.)
So I jumped back in my Prius, cranked up the cowboy tunes and lit out for Sonoma. Yippee Kay Yay!
Made it up to Sonoma in time to see a beautiful moon rise over our barn.
NOTE: So would I recommend coming to BlogHer? Yes, in spite of my bitching, I sure would. I’d even pay the full price if I had to instead of the cheapo student price I got in on. If I didn’t live in San Francisco, I might even consider traveling here for it. The amount of great information I got out of it has surely saved me weeks of time and buckets of tears. Overall, I left invigorated to ramp up this blogging thing. I just recommend that you have a clear plan what you want to get out of it and are very, very careful what sessions you sign up for.
Another NOTE: I added the websites of more cool people I met at BlogHer and, for a short time, I’m activating the “include snippet of post” feature. I’ve visited all these sites and they are GOOD.
this is really an interesting post. when I had a blog I mostly visited the elder bloggers who tend to talk politics – memories – cooking – aging etc. I would try and read some of the other younger bloggers but I was turned off by the same things you mentioned. once in awhile it can be funny but it does seem like potty humor is used constantly.
you were in the same photography session as one of my friends….I would have loved that session!
sazzy
Very interesting take on the conference.
I was never a big Dooce fan. I just did not get her, still don’t understand what all the fuss is about her. It seems that back in the “golden age” of blogging, it was the navel gazers and fart talkers that got most of the publicity and subsequent paying work from it, on the female side. That always bothered me.
Glad you at least got some photography tips out of it. And yes, get a macro lens!
Your experience with “A-list” bloggers (god, what a horrid term) is exactly the same that I had at the first BlogHer. You summed it up perfectly: “I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was back in high school, watching the kids who wanted desperately to be “in” hanging on every word the cheerleaders and popular girls burbled in the school lobby…” Luckily, I was able to make more connections with other folks this year, which made it better for me.
Rather than expecting a conference packed with information, I came with the hope for meeting some interesting folks and participating in a conversation about Women that I don’t normally get a chance to. BlogHer is definitely different from other conferences I’ve been to.
Thanks so much for listing me as one of the “cool bloggers” you met at BlogHer. I’m glad you liked the blog.
This was my first BlogHer too, and like you I found the sessions a mixed bag, but I really appreciated the chance to connect with so many other smart women and talk to them about what they are doing. I learned a ton from them, and it really made me realize how much I need to start attending some of the meetups here in Seattle.
Debbie
Ouch! I’m sorry I and we were so disappointing, but I do find it interesting and funny and even a little “ah life”ish that when I first arrived at the conference (my first BlogHer), the first event I went to made me feel totally high-school-yucky and idiotic and stuttery and like there was no one who wanted to talk to me, something Stephanie of Greek Tragedy also seems to have felt? I suspect that we all feel the same way, on a certain level, when confronted with a bunch of people who don’t know but whom may already have judgments about us?
For instance, part of why Maggie had to rescue me with all her “What do you think, Evany?’s was because I was so profoundly nervous, and knowing that, Maggie had promised to throw me a lifeline if I ever needed one. I can fully appreciate how watching a nervous person faltering might not be all that entertaining or informative, I totally do. But what’s so like life-ish about it is how you assumed my shortcomings came from a place of cooler-than-thou, but really it was from a place of more-petrified-than-thou.
Also I think that when Dooce was fiddling with her phone, she was sending out a Twitter telling people not to talk on their phones during panels, so you definitely came from a place of shared irritation on that front.
Thanks for the feedback, and for coming to the panel in the first place–I am definitely grateful that people at least showed up!
Best,
Evany
Hey Evany,
I think you’ve got the wrong end of the mouse here. My criticism wasn’t so much directed at you as at the moderator, Maggie Mason, and at the audience. As evidenced by her sites, Maggie has a very organized mind. As evidenced by the panel discussion, she didn’t put that mind to use with much preparation. Even if she’d collected the four most brilliant members of Toastmasters International, she wouldn’t have had a coherent, useful discussion if she hadn’t mapped out ahead of time what points the panel should hit and how the discussion should progress and maybe rehearsed it with all of you or even given a heads-up email. She didn’t seem to do that, then defaulted to taking audience questions. Which seemed like a weak time filler and was completely useless to many of us. YOu guys are on the panel are the ones who’ve cracked the code. We wanted to hear how you did it, how you would have done it better or differently and other top tips. I didn’t need to hear the ramblings of people who were at the same level as me or below. In most of my other sessions, the moderators were able to take audience questions, but keep the discussion on point. So I know it can be done.
As to my cheerleader comment, you missed the point. It was a criticism of the audience rather than the panel. I think some people got so Fangrrly, they didn’t hold the panel to the point, which I found audience members often did in other sessions. My comment was not aimed at any nudge that you may have needed, but at the fact that the audience was laughing at even comments like “What do you think, Evany?” Much like the nerds who wanted to attract the in-crowd would desperately laugh at anything they said in an attempt to get on their good side.
As for Dooce and her phone fidgeting. Well, call me Old Skool, but even if she were phoning in a $2 million dollar donation to African relief, I still find it extremely rude to be fiddling around with gadgets when someone is speaking. Do it in the break. Especially if the speakers are people who are your good friends! Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me so much if the AV nerds in the back weren’t talking so loudly and rudely among themselves.
In any case, I hope my criticisms are constructive. They weren’t meant as personal or mean. It’s just I was paying for a product and feel justified in discussing the quality if it isn’t to my expectation.
Fair enough! I do know that Maggie did a great deal of preparation in advance, and she had notecards full of questions, but I told her I personally preferred not to know what she was going to ask because I tend to do much better, on the nervousness/stuttering scale, when I don’t have the chance to churn things over and over in my mind in advance. But I can totally see how my lack of prepared/considered comments might make for a disappointing experience on your end.
Also just to reiterate, Heather’s texting was a plea to the crowd at that panel itself to please not talk during the panels, based on her frustration over not being able to hear from the back of the room. Therefore the request wouldn’t have been all that helpful after-the-fact? However I can see how texting is in itself another form or rudeness (if somewhat less disruptive than actually talking on your phone).
In any case, sorry that you were disappointed in the way the audience questions were handled, and the lack of concrete information on offer–if there are any specific questions you have that I might be able to answer for you, please let me know!
Thanks for your response,
Evany
Well, thanks for your response. We’re all learning and hopefully it will go more smoothly in the future. I hope my post indicated that I got more than my money’s worth out of the event and would definitely pay full price and travel to it in the future.
If it’s any consolation, you came across as very fresh and engaging, not nervous at all. Again, I blame the moderator for not bringing that more into play.
And for the future, it is the moderator who is in charge. She should have taken control by saying, “Excuse me, but some people in the back are having a hard time hearing. Can we ask that cell phone use and loud typing be put on hold until after the session.” Or Dooce could have raised her hand and said, “Some of us in the back can’t hear the panel over the cell phone conversations.” Whereupon Maggie could have taken control.
Texting to people who are already fiddling around with their devices annoyingly is just perpetuating the annoyance. But I’m becoming like the curmudgeonly old man who was always yelling at the neighborhood kids, “Hey you, get off the lawn!”
I feel bad for anyone hanging on my every word, since they were all whispered and raspy.
I felt like the original direction of the panel went off course because the Blogher woman came up and took my microphone and passed it to audience members 15 minutes in, way before the scheduled Q&A was supposed to start, and before we got to really get into the meat of our discussion. I had some things I honestly wanted to impart.
Regardless, I enjoyed being a part of it, and I feel like Maggie did a good job driving the boat.
I’ll take “fresh and engaging”! Thank you!
And if you want to talk curmudgeonly old man, you should have seen my head-swivel glare when someone started CLIPPING THEIR FINGERNAILS during the Naked Blogging panel. I was aghast, I tell you. AGHAST!
Evany and Sarah,
You gals are going to be amazing next year now that you know the pitfalls. And I’ll certainly attend any session you are involved in. If only to see the smack-down I know you are going to give to cell phoners, texters and toe-nail clippers.
I didn't attend BlogHer this year, but I did last year, so I'll comment based on my experience.
It seems that everyone was blown away by the opening session where bloggers were reading their favorite posts.
These were submitted and vetted, and all you had to do was read something you'd already written–something that had already been tested and approved. From the sounds of it, this part of the conference was everyone's favorite.
Now, some people are amazing writers and aren't the greatest public speakers. And sometimes when people are putting together a panel, they pick people they know and like–but maybe those people aren't particularly gifted at public speaking.
Also, chairing a panel = herding cats. Running a Q&A session = herding a huge herd of cats. It's not easy to keep focused.
Also, you can't discuss your way to a fact. For real, concrete, useful information, somebody has to take charge and give a presentation.
Now, I'm a great public speaker, and maybe not such a great writer. So if BlogHer ever has a panel called "How to Blog for Four Years and Yet Somehow Remain Under the Radar" they should totally get me to do it. I'd be a knock-out.
have not ever gone to blogher, but i have stopped going to not necessarily the kos convention because i did go the first year, and i had the same experience there as you did at blogher. all the kewl kids vs. everyone else.
someone whose name i shall not mention, an extremely kewl kid, with whom i had thought i had a decent email relationship, turned out to be a real jerk who snubbed me not once, not twice, but three times (ok, it was duncan black).
so i’ve stopped going to large blogging conventions, and stick w/small blogger parties in my area.
I skipped the first session for breakfast with a friend. Sounds like the right choice, even if I did run into SF friends who I’d not told about my trip.
I found the photography session very useful and had the same revelation you described. This intensified my desire for a new lens.
I really enjoyed talking to you about your move from SF to farming. It gave me the feeling that any life is possible.
“Now, some people are amazing writers and aren’t the greatest public speakers. And sometimes when people are putting together a panel, they pick people they know and like–but maybe those people aren’t particularly gifted at public speaking.”
I think Poppy nailed it…apart from the highschooly feelings…I and some others really expected MORE from the sessions….
If people are on a PANEL they should be the best on that subject….period.
I think the level of professionalism needs to go up a notch this being the fourth con they have done.
I don’t want it to be WOMEN ARE AWESOME hug hug kiss kiss…I want it to be we are people who are bloggers and we are interested in the internet and the opportunities and are all quiet smart thank you very much.
I get tired of the we are marginalized and downtrodden….
oh and I found you following trails of links on this bloghernytimes huffiness